Proposal of "Global warming and how to handle it"

PROPOSAL OF "GLOBAL WARMING AND HOW TO HANDLE IT" Student's Name: Professor's Name: Course Title: Date: Introduction: The Impact of Climate Change on Canadian Agriculture Climate change (or global warming) has been known to change the frequency as well as intensity of weather events. The change in weather events is a great challenge to human and natural systems as it poses risks to the natural ecosystem and interferes with the normal balance of nature (Reinsborough, 2003). Agriculture is by far the most vulnerable system to global warming. The major objective of this empirical research study is to outline as well as estimate the economic impact of global warming on agriculture in the western Canadian prairies; additionally, the study aims at capturing the effects of weather conditions on the viability of systems of production alongside the effects of market prices by accurately predicting the economic effects of global warming (Tubiello, Soussana, & Howden, 2007). To better understand the problem of global warming on agriculture on western Canadian agriculture, a two way effects-based panel model with time and provinces is calibrated in order to simulate a set of potential global warming and global change in market prices on prairie agriculture economics. From the effects panel model, the predicted effects of rainfall changes; future market prices in the world; and increase in temperature indicate that indeed global warming will have complicated effects on Canadian prairie agriculture in a non-linear manner. The major hypothesis prior to carrying out this empirical research study is that global warming has a major negative effect on the Canadian prairie agriculture. Another hypothesis suitable in this study is that global warming will likely result in changes in rainfall patterns, increase in global market prices, and increase in temperature. The study results will verify the vulnerability of the Canadian prairie agriculture to water scarcity as a result of negative rainfall patterns. Therefore, land value and use in the prairies depend on the amount of precipitation received; this is the reason why precipitation is very crucial to agriculture in the prairies. Procedures In order to effectively carry out this research study, a detailed collection of data and subsequent analysis is required. Data collection methods will include actual rainfall and temperature measurements using the required apparatus (rain gauge and thermometer, respectively). Additionally, farmers in the western prairies have to be interviewed in order to get a clear outline of what they have been going through in terms of global warming experiences. By interviewing the farmers, it is also possible to get their perceptions on global price trends in both common and uncommon crops. Apart from conducting interviews with the farmers, real price mark-ups will also be collected from different market prices in the area and also outside the western prairies in order to fairly compare the two sets of prices. On the analysis part, the land climate Ricardian model introduced by Mendelsohn et al. (1994) will be utilized. Although the model has a limitation in that it a...